


Intrinsic

by dollcewrites



Category: One Piece
Genre: M/M, like.. an imagined end, mild angst because sanji's self worth issues, this is like 70 percent sanji analysis, totland/whole cake island arc spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 13:14:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7803325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollcewrites/pseuds/dollcewrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>intrinsic<br/>/ɪnˈtrɪnsɪk/</p><p>adjective—<br/>1. belonging naturally; essential.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intrinsic

**Author's Note:**

> throws this out here

The first thing Sanji learns is that he is a useless instrument.

His plea for salvation lands futile on his the ears of his father. Cruel children’s hearts feel nothing for something they call _brother_.

He runs away before he is just six.

 

The second thing he learns is that he is an instrument of convenience.

Captains that tower over him sweep the decks with capes, and he sweeps the deck with a foamed mop. He seems as inanimate as his tools. He does what he is asked. He is fed.

He is allowed to cook. This ship is the best yet. His superiors smile at him, talk to him. Soundly at night he cannot sleep, but they teach him more about cooking, and that is enough. He reads books. They laugh at the words _All blue_ when they tumble from his mouth.

 

The third thing he learns is that he is a vessel of survival.

A leg and dream are exchanged for him, something he knows he must return one day, he must, he must, _he must._ Every fibre of his being dies on that rock out at sea, but he does not. He survives, but. He is not certain he does it for himself.

 

The fourth thing he learns is that he is an instrument of pleasure.

Women’s nails clutch his suit and scrape his skin. He is sixteen the first time, and she is old enough to be getting secretive about her age, but she’s beautiful and womanly and Zeff shoots him a look when he smells her perfume on Sanji later that night. By the time Sanji is eighteen, he does the shopping himself, takes the boat to the seaside town and picks up the fresh fruit and vegetables they cannot obtain elsewhere. He stays the night, liquor his companion always, women his companions sometimes. He would not call it making love, but it is his privilege to give pleasure. Nineteen finds him in the bathroom stall of the Baratie, giving head to a man with a scar across his knuckle and tanned skin. (That’s all Sanji can remember about him.) He considers then that he’s obsessed with being of use: but this does not happen again. Not frequently, at least. The same cannot be said for the blowjobs.

 

The next thing he learns is that he is an instrument of death.

He’d known this long ago, if he’s honest. A weak boy’s wrath quakes inside him, but his muscles are refined, he is built up from the ground. Zeff has sculpted him, instructed him. He wields his legs as weapons, and the soles of his shined shoes crush cartilage and crack ribs. He can drop to the ground, a pinwheel of destruction, he can roundhouse kick scum from the restaurant. He’s taken down by Zeff again and again, and each time he stands up, better.

 

And then a man—a boy really, a supernova of seventeen, bright and new—appears.

He is crowned with a strawhat and armed with a rubber smile. He does not want Sanji for his heels of death. The woman, the redhead, does not want him for sex either—he can see through her flirting. (He doesn't mind, he is happy to be a tool.)

No, what the boy want are his hands, his skill, _him._ A cook. A nakama. But Sanji’s hands are attached at the wrist, and those to his arms, and his body, chained to the deck of the Baratie, keeping his salvaged life safe. He thinks that living is the best he can do for Zeff.

He is so very wrong, of course.

Fullbody goes down under Luffy’s fists and the swordsman’s torso is slashed across, a bloody and messy promise is cried out to the dry sky. The world itself sheds no tears. The sun smiles upon them, keeping a secret.

Sanji realises that living is so very far from the best he can do for Zeff. In fact, it may be disgraceful. This is the first thing he learns from the Strawhat Pirates—better to live and die for your dream, than to live without fighting for it.

It is this day, the day when the words _All Blue_ escape his lips in a grin open as the waters, that changes what he learns. It’s this day the Baratie’s roof is destroyed and his inhibitions are destroyed, the day he dives into the ocean after a rubber hammer who he will call _captain_. This is the day he starts _living._

  


He becomes a vessel for the dreams of his friends, too. He can’t help himself. At Arlong Park he dives into the water to face a fishman’s wrath, because he knows they deserve it, and knows Nami never deserved any of this. On a snowpiled mountainside in the Drum Kingdom, Sanji throws himself into an avalanche without hesitation; better his spine than his captain and navigator. Later in the sky he steps into the line of fire for his friends, and his body conducts the wrath of a delusional dictator. At Enies Lobby he stands atop a fortress as the flag of the government burns. His feet are apart, steady on the ground, shoulders set. (Luffy would go to the ends of the earth for his nakama, and Sanji would go with him if he could, and beyond.) At Thriller Bark, a Shichibukai appears with the hand of god to take his captain’s life. Zoro offers his own. Sanji tries to take the swordsman’s place, needs Zoro to understand—his life should be taken instead. The Pirate King and the World’s Greatest Swordsman are dreams that Sanji knows will be a reality, dreams he would be happy to facilitate. Sanji is not worth what they are. Sanji is different.

But Zoro knocks his broken body down. And on Drum Island, Luffy carried his broken body up. And in Skypiea, Chopper had fixed it—as he had before, and as he will do again, and again, as many times as Sanji needs. He lives, he lives, he _lives._ And they want him to live.

 

Sanji is not an instrument when Luffy first kisses him.

Sanji is not a course of survival, an object of pleasure, a left-hand man of destruction. He is not his heels of death. He is not even his hands of life, not wholly, not anymore. He is their nakama. They are his family. He is a treasured, treasured soul, and Luffy’s lips tell him this over and over.

Luffy’s hair tickles against his chin wild and windswept when he lies against Sanji’s heart. His captain’s lips flutter over the skin of his throat and chest, their hands lace together in the dark and in the sunlight. Every touch is warm, Luffy is never hesitant, always certain, always eager to please Sanji. When Luffy’s fingers curl in him, Sanji curls against Luffy in ecstasy. Sanji lights up in the same manner whenever Luffy states that his food is the best.

 

Sanji finally learns, when he is twenty-one (better late than never) that his nakama really wouldn’t care if he couldn’t cook, if he couldn’t kick, if he had no use. They fight to brink of hell even when he begs them not to, and Nami’s hair is wet with blood and Chopper’s roar is feral.

 

His obsession with performance and purpose shatters before him the way Luffy’s fists shatter the Judge’s bones and Big Mom’s empire, and nothing has ever been more terrifying than how _angry_ Luffy looked when he saw those slim silver handcuffs. And nothing is more tender than the way Luffy kisses Sanji’s every finger when they are gone, and the palm of his hands, the pulse of his wrists, all the while murmuring sweet, sweet _everythings_ against Sanji’s lips.

 

He finally understands they will always come for him. It’s not a miracle; it won’t change how he acts or how he is, but there’s a shift in the horizon. The acceptance of his own worth knocks the air from his lungs. It’s almost laughable, as he kneels in the wreckage of a wedding, that he could have thought Luffy would give up.

  
It’s when his fingertips touch the brim of the straw hat on his head, that he realises how _loved_ he is.


End file.
